Wikipedia
Sensitivity training is a form of training with the goal of making people more aware of their own prejudices and more sensitive to others.
According to his biographer, Alfred J. Marrow, Kurt Lewin laid the foundations for sensitivity training in a series of workshops he organised in 1946 to carry out a 'change' experiment, in response to a request from the Director of the Connecticut State Interracial Commission. This led to the founding of the National Training Laboratories in Bethel, Maine in 1947. Kurt Lewin, who met Eric Trist in 1933, influenced the work of the London, England, United Kingdom Tavistock Clinic, both in its work with soldiers during the second world war and in its later work with the Journal Human Relations jointly founded by a partnership of the Tavistock Institute and Lewin's group at MIT.
During World War II, Psychologists like Carl Rogers in the USA and William Sargant, John Rawlings Rees, and Eric Trist in Britain were used by the military to help soldiers deal with traumatic stress disorders (then known as shell shock). This work, which required service to large numbers of patients by a small number of therapists and necessarily emphasized rapidity and effectiveness helped spur the development of group therapy as a treatment technique. Rogers and others evolved their work into new forms including encounter groups designed for persons who were not diagnosably ill but who were recognized to have widespread problems associated with isolation from others common in American society. Other leaders in the development of encounter groups, including Will Schutz, worked at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
Meanwhile, Training Groups or T-Groups were being developed at the National Training Labs, now part of the National Education Association. Over time the techniques of T-Groups and Encounter Groups have merged and divided and splintered into specialized topics, seeking to promote sensitivity to others perceived as different and seemingly losing some of their original focus on self-exploration as a means to understanding and improving relations with others in a more general sense.
Usage examples of "sensitivity training".
I'll also try to get him into some kind of therapy that may include sensitivity training and anger management.
Some of the guys they worked with at Hammerstead were nasty leeches, and no amount of sensitivity training was going to change that.
You will also, at the earliest time your duties allow, report to the Chaplain's Office, where you will enroll in Commander Ferris's next available sensitivity training session on sexual harassment.
Group therapy and sensitivity training sessions are packaged experiences.
I have this problem with Feds, like most cops do, and not even sensitivity training would help.
Taylor's Marine Corps sensitivity training was operating, Howell thought.
Isn't this the administration that wants everyone to take sensitivity training so war were more tolerant o one another?
Director Rachlin complained that the CIA spends too much money on political sensitivity training and not enough on keeping track of sociopaths, mad scientists, and ideological foes.